Claude Whitmyer:

"The coordinators from 1974 to 1994 were:

Andy (Bahauddin) Alpine - cofounded and coordinated until Shali

Shali Parsons - From andy up to 1982

Roger Pritchard - Roger was never the coordinator of the San Francisco Briarpatch. He founded and was one of several coordinators of the EastBay Briarpatch.

There were also several coordinators of the Marin Briarpatch including Peter the pillow maker a woman whose name I can't remember and Michael Stein.

Salli Rasberry and Tom Hargadon also founded a Sonoma Briarpatch that lasted a few years.

Claude Whitmyer - Coordinated San Francisco Briarpatch from 1982 to present

All of these networks have gone into relative hibernation, though the spirit and interest still exists as testified to my the continual queries that Claude receives.

Claude Whitmyer has acted continuously as Briarpatch coordinator from 1982 to the present. The demand for support from members has been highly variable across the years and the number of people attending the monthly lunches finally declined to only a handful each year in 1999, when they were discontinued.

Claude still runs a Briarpatch phone line and fields questions from the curious, those looking for advice and those whom might best be served through a synergic connection with fellow members. As the economy has declined interest in the Briarpatch has increased slightly.

Claude and Paul Terry provided ongoing, voluntary consulting for members, by appointment, until 2000. In the mid 1980s Paul Terry began a role as key consultant to the San Francisco Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center and Claude began directing new business to that center to take Paul's classes.

New and old Briars alike benefited from the training programs and indepth guidance from Paul and other business consultants he recruited. Claude consulted and taught at Renaissance for 12 years, from 1987 to 1999.

Michael Phillips and Salli Rasberry captured many of the Briarpatch practices for success and put them into a series of books, including The Briarpatch Review, The Seven Laws of Money, Honest Business and Marketing Without Advertising. Together with Claude Whitmyer they also wrote what might be considered a Briarpatch Business Manual, the book Running a One-Person Business, which sold nearly 70,000 copies from 1986 through 2000 when it went out of print. All of these books can often be found in used book stores."

Claude Whitmyer 4/15/02